


The Plush Tooka

by Pom_Rania



Series: Little By Little [4]
Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, POV Outsider, References to Miscarriage, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-16 22:46:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9292841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pom_Rania/pseuds/Pom_Rania
Summary: It's never a good sign.





	

The plush tooka was of much high quality than would be expected on a Rebel base. Its face was set into an engaging grin, and its fur was wonderfully soft to the touch. Its colours blended together in a pleasing harmony.

She hated it.

She couldn’t stand to look at it. It reminded her too much of what she’d lost. She felt it every time she glanced down at her abdomen and didn’t see the gentle curve, every time someone mentioned going for drinks and she started to respond that she shouldn’t, every time she heard an interesting name and automatically wondered if it would be a good choice for the baby. 

Every time somebody asked her how she was doing.

She didn’t know what was worse: when they hadn’t heard, and asked how pregnancy was treating her; or when they knew, and offered sympathy and reassurance and advice that didn’t help. Both were horrible. (The worst had been when somebody told her she wasn’t injured, and could always have more children, so she should quit being so upset about it when people were dying and crippled out there in the fight. She had had to be physically restrained from attacking that idiot with the nearest blunt object.) 

She could deal with seeing the medical droid, more or less. It had been treating base personnel for the last few months, and she had first encountered it _before_. It wasn’t inextricably tied in her mind with everything that hurt, not like the plush tooka. 

Before, she had found the medical droid amusing, with its lack of social skills. Her life had been fine: she could make tangible strikes against the Empire, she had an unblemished record of victories, and she was expecting a child. Nothing could bother her for very long. 

She had lost all that in the attack. Her ship was damaged, so she couldn’t fight like she had been able to. She could no longer claim to have never suffered a defeat. And although she had escaped without serious injuries, the stress on her body had proven fatal to her little Tyla or Murrie or Aithan or whatever name she would have chosen. 

The medical droid had expressed sympathy and regret, in its detached way, and given her the plush tooka for “comfort”. She had hugged it early on, when she was overwhelmed with grief and just needed to hold _something_. But once her body had healed enough, and she was discharged from the medbay, it simply sat as a mocking reminder, like it was trying to compensate for her baby who was never even born. She didn’t throw it out – she wouldn’t, something of that quality shouldn’t be wasted – but she hated it. 

Receiving a plush tooka from that droid apparently wasn’t uncommon. If there was something wrong and the person needed “comfort”, it would give one to them. However, none of the ones she had seen were as fine as hers. The others were for momentary discomfort, or a week on crutches, or bed rest for a day or two. Hers was for a loss that could never be replaced. When she thought about it, which was as rarely as possible, she supposed that someone else might also be given a high-quality plush tooka by the droid; but it would always be a bad sign, and she had never seen it before.

Not until she saw him.

He was familiar, even though she couldn’t remember his name; the Jedi, the one who wasn’t blind. He was walking quickly, away from the buildings – and the medical office – towards the edge of the base. It was mostly covered by his arms, but she recognized it immediately. Another high-quality plush tooka.

What had he lost? All his limbs were still there, she couldn’t see any major injuries (and probably would have heard gossip about it beforehand anyways), and he was male so it couldn’t have been a... what she’d had. His expression looked normal, but she knew from personal experience just how little that could mean. The face which looked back at her in the mirror was the same as it had always been, even when she felt like her heart had been ripped out. 

She didn’t say anything to him. From how he was moving, he probably needed to be alone. What would she say, anyways? 

The question followed her the rest of the day. What would she say? She knew what _didn’t_ help, in her situation, but nothing more. She didn’t even know what was wrong with him....

She didn’t need to know. She knew pain, and loss, and grief. She remembered all the intrusive questions she had received, and how she’d sworn to never subject anyone else to that. 

When she next saw him, the next day, he was alone and nobody else was in the immediate area.

“You wouldn’t know me, but can we talk for a bit?” she blurted out, before she could second-guess herself. She remembered people going up to her like they wanted to say something, then backing off. She had felt like there was a sign saying “damaged” on her forehead.

He jumped a little, looked at her, then looked around. “What do you want?” he asked. 

“I saw the tooka you got, and I know what it means.” She looked at the ground. “The droid, it gives them… it’s only if it’s bad. I have one too,” she whispered, and a hand went to the empty place where her child would have still been growing. “I’m not going to ask you what’s wrong, too many people have done that to me, but....” Her foot traced patterns in the ground. “If you ever want to talk about how it feels, or how to get up in the morning when your life seems like it’s collapsed around you, or just anything that doesn’t hurt, I’m around.”

He didn’t say anything. Had she made a mistake? Had she been wrong, or accidentally insulted him? She searched his face for any hint of his reaction. 

He bit his lip and studied his fingers. “You don’t know,” he said, with something like wonder. “It’s not that obvious. You don’t know what it is.”

Should she know? 

He looked up, and gave her a smile she recognized perfectly: the same one she saw in the reflection when nothing was okay and might never be okay, but she kept going anyways. “Thanks,” he said, and walked away.


End file.
